shivani_n's reviews
386 reviews

for school. it was okay 

another one for school 

read this for AP lit summer homework.. really good but so depressing. interesting insights about human behaviour and relationships, especially familial and marital relationships.

"call us even. call me crazy. i don't care. just... just call me yours."

to be honest this book didn't have much plot considering it's mostly just kai and paedyn walking through the kingdom to get back to the palace, while various people make attempts to attack, kidnap, and/or kill them along the way. that being said, I DON'T CARE BECAUSE I ATE IT TF UP. i liked the first book better but i still loved the sequel and i love kai and pae sooooo much. the banter was bantering the yearning was YEARNING the "i hate you but not really" vibes were GIVING and i was smiling the whole time. this series has been so enjoyable to read and i literally need book 3 right now bc wtf that ending??? are you kidding me???? i need to know what happens!!

i truly couldn’t not tell you a single thing i liked about this book, it was that terrible. not only was it creepy and disturbing, but also profoundly boring. 

first read (2021): holy GOD this book was so good. i love oscar wilde's writing style, the line "the world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. the curves of your lips rewrite history" is going to LITERALLY HAUNT ME FOREVER. poor basil was so in love with dorian and was just trying to confess his love but then got stabbed to death.. i love the conversations this book has about art and the purpose of art. why we create it, why we consume it, and how valuable our youth and being young really is. this book is a literal masterpiece!! i want to read more classics in 2022 and i'm glad i started with this one.

reread (2024): i adored the picture of dorian gray when i first read it and gave it 5 stars, but after a reread i’m going to rate it 4 stars. i still think it’s an incredible book but i just didn’t enjoy reading it as much as i did three years ago. it’s funny because it’s usually the opposite like usually you like something more after you read it when you’re older lol. anyway it was still enjoyable to read this edition with all the footnotes with extra information and lines that were cut and added etc. it added more meaning to the book and gave really cool insights about wilde’s inner monologue when he was writing; it made me understand it more thoroughly. i think it’s hilarious that in my first review of this book (see above) i wrote about how the book shows “how valuable our youth is”, when the book is quite literally about how the prospect of youth and beauty morally destroys people 💀💀💀 idk what 14 year old me was on about LMAO.

yeah let's not talk about it

i read this for my summer homework, and it was actually quite nice to read some poetry. a lot of the poems in here were great, my favourite was "tablets VI" by dunya mikhail. however, even though all poetry is romantic in its own way, i still think it's a crime there's not a single love poem in this whole anthology lol.

the synopsis of wild ground is so interesting, but i can't say the same for the actual book 😭. i was disappointed by the story as a whole to be honest. i didn't see what was so special about danny and neef's "connection" or how they "loved each other so much". i honestly think they were both kind of shitty and toxic together and it's better that they're apart anyway lmao. maybe that's the point but i don't know i feel like the author was making it out to be some really special relationship that the main character could never really forget, but then didn't actually succeed in letting the reader in on the so-called uniqueness of their relationship. 

i thought danny was kind of a dick, and neef is a boring character. i wasn't particularly impressed by the writing either. overall i would call this book very bleak and just not worth reading, especially because it's 337 pages. so yeah this one just wasn't for me!

had to read this for my AP lit summer homework, but it was boring and i didn't actually learn much.